Frozen Spheres

Inspired by my friends at Barron Park Preschool, who regularly send me pictures of their morning activities (thank you!), we frozen water balloons, added some salt on top to create a nice melted groove to catch color, and offered the children a chance to drop water colors to create little channels of color. As my friend Craig described it, they look like little geodes.

First, freeze some water balloons and once frozen through, peel the balloons off of them. (I made this part easier by dunking them in warm water...the paper-thin balloons I used slid right off).

Then, find some trays, and small containers of color. We used trays rather than baby food jars to encourage  the kids to use the droppers rather than picking up the whole jar and pouring it.  However we also offered a baby food jar full of plain water in case they wanted to do some mixing or pouring.

We added salt on top of the balloons while we were getting the work trays ready. That way it could start melting.  I guess this brilliant idea was the work of Angela at BPP, a teacher with some amazing ideas!

As it turns out, syringes made for a quite messy activity, so if you want to avoid the splatter, use regular droppers.  Daiso sells these little single serving soy sauce to-go containers that are fish-shaped droppers.  They don't hold much but they went well with our ocean theme!